Part 3

Needless to say, I regarded with extreme interest this first person of my own race I was privileged to see, who was, like myself, a captive of these terribly efficient Venusians. Was it sympathy with her plight that made me think her pretty? She seemed of a Spanish type, her long black hair parted smoothly in the middle, and hanging in glossy braids on either side of her pale, pathetically piquant face. She was clad in a dress made of the universal material used by these people, reaching almost to her ankles. Though she was small, the garment gave her a look of height and dignity. She moved gracefully to our table, and without a word placed before us the dishes on her tray. As she leaned over, she glanced at me with such a hopeless look in her large, brown eyes that I was stabbed to the heart. Before she turned away, I saw a tear rolling down her cheek. She brushed at it with a slender little hand, as she retired with the empty tray through the rock panel, which closed silently behind her.

“That,” said Oomlag, arranging the dishes before me, “is one of our most valuable guests. She has been with us almost five years, and has been invaluable in teaching us Spanish and English. She came from a small town in Arizona. I forgot to tell you, you are to hold no converse at any time with any of your fellow beings. To do so will have painful consequences. You think she is pretty, don’t you?”

I boiled inwardly. This leering, inhuman brute was my absolute master, and nothing I could say or do would help in the least; on the contrary, if I said what I really thought, it would be the worse for me.

“Oh, she’s not so much,” I said, casually. “She is too pale, for one thing. Tell me, Oomlag, what is this dinner you have ordered for me? How do you grow anything fit to eat down here? What is this soup made of?”

Before me, in hollow stone dishes, was a repast of hot soup, vegetables and bread. The only utensil was a large spoon made of some sort of fibre.

“While you eat,” said Oomlag, stretching his long legs and adjusting his jacket, “I shall endeavor to explain things to you. Before I can answer your questions, it is necessary to trace out certain other things. Take your soup and tell me what you think of it.”

I did so, finding it very delicious, rather like mock turtle. I told him it was very palatable.

“I am glad you like it. It is a combination of crushed yucca roots and prairie dog bones, prepared according to our own formula.”

I made a wry face and laid the spoon down.

“Ah, I see your imagination tells you the soup is not so good.” Oomlag grinned horribly, his yellow lips baring his sharp teeth. “Strange how you creatures allow your imagination to dictate your likes and dislikes. If I had not told you the ingredients of that soup, you would have enjoyed it thoroughly. Now, having told you, you find it disagreeable, though you just finished saying it was good. You might as well learn to like it, for you will have it every day. The vegetables are--but I must begin at the beginning. Not such bad bread, is it?”

“TO begin with, we are, as I told you before, from Venus. Our scientists have spent centuries in perfecting a machine for interplanetary flight. We have long had the necessary power. The problem was to determine the relative position of the two planets, the pull of gravity of the sun, Venus and your earth, the time necessary to make the flight, the provisioning and ventilating of the projectile, the perfecting of a device to detect and repel meteorites, and countless other problems, all vitally important. The data for all this was handed down from generation to generation, and finally everything had been thought of.

“No doubt you have been curious to know why the Field General interrogated you about bismuth and radium. He has had too much to do supervising things here, so has only a smattering of your languages; but that question he felt he should ask you personally. The reason is, we have an element about half-way in the atomic scale between bismuth and radium which gives us unlimited power by the breaking up of its atoms. We know that this element does exist on this earth, and the Field General thought perhaps you knew of its discovery. That, however, is only incidental, and not the reason for bringing you here.

“Having found out how to harness this element, we were well supplied with light and power on our planet. These lights you see are run by radio current from several plants in our workings, each dynamo, if I may call it that, generating a powerful radio wave which is caught and utilized by each of these crystals. The crystals are considerably larger the further away they are from the source of power, for distance demands more filament to catch the power waves.

“A fortunate discovery, though with tragic consequences to the discoverer, revealed the possibility of utilizing this element with another in such proportions as to repel anything in front of the wave generated by their intermixing. That was the beginning of our centuries of work on an interplanetary machine. It is obvious that if the ray generated by these two elements will repel anything in its path, then by proper control, intensifying and reducing it at will, enough force could be made to repel us away from Venus and toward the earth, using auxiliary rays to repel any stray meteorites. And there are plenty of those. But the exhaustive calculations! Nothing could be left to chance. The best brains of our people worked ceaselessly on the problem until everything was figured out.

“I do not think it is of much use to try to explain to you the workings of the interplanetary machine, since you are unfamiliar with the element responsible for its success. All I can say is, each of the two combining elements are kept in finely powdered form in separate containers negative to their power as lead is to your X-ray. The proper amount of each to be combined is let carefully into a tubular apparatus, separated by a thin sheet of negative metal which is then withdrawn by a special device. The power wave produced by the resulting combination is carefully calculated, and the charge is renewed in another tube at just the right moment. A battery of auxiliary tubes is always kept here for any unexpected occurrence which might take place at any moment.

“My parents told me that the take-off was most exciting. Countless thousands of my fellow Venusians were crowded as close as they could get to obtain a last glimpse of the travelers. At exactly the right moment, the big projectile soared slowly into the sky, gradually gaining momentum as it left the stratosphere and entered outer space. Faster and faster it went, with its meteorite detector busily at work spotting and repelling these menaces, and its tubes taking larger and larger quantities of the precious elements. You can judge for yourself the speed they attained when I tell you it took exactly six of your months for my people to get here.”

“Pardon the interruption,” I said, munching a piece of the bread that tasted exactly like a dry waffle, “but how did you know where you were going to land? Suppose you had dropped into the ocean, or even in the midst of a populated district? How and why did you hit this part of New Mexico?”

“That is explained by the atomic telescope, an invention of my great-great-grandfather’s. Using the element similar to radium as a base, we wash a sensitive plate with this certain mixture containing a large proportion of that element. In order to save time, let us call this element ‘Venusite’ which, though not the name we have for it, is more descriptive and makes it easier for you to understand. This telescope is tremendously long, and contains a series of condensing reflectors of such accuracy and delicacy that when it is trained on a certain spot, an image on your earth, 30,000,000 miles away, is recorded on an inconceivably small part of the sensitive plate. This plate is then treated by an agent which causes the atoms in the ‘Venusite’ to start breaking up, and as they do so, an enlarged image is thrown on a screen. By exposing various parts of the sensitive plate in rapid succession, a series of images is obtained. We thus succeeded in exploring the surface of your earth thoroughly, proving to our own satisfaction that we could not only live on your planet, but live better than on our own. We saw that this region was practically uninhabited, and had the advantage of possessing enormous caverns suitable for housing us. It remained only to calculate the proper time for leaving in order to hit this spot. A slight error put my people several hundred miles west of here, but by a skillful handling of the ‘Venusite’ they managed to bring their machine down by the entrance of a huge limestone cave. The rest was easy.”

DURING the latter part of this conversation I noticed that Oomlag reached under his jacket several times and made the funny rustling sounds I had heard before. I asked him what he was doing.

“Oh, yes, our portable wireless, by means of which we can communicate with anyone else in the workings.”

He unbuttoned his jacket, exposing a contrivance about 18 inches square at the base, with a dome-like top, suspended from his shoulders and held in place by a strap around his waist. This explained the pouter-pigeon appearance of these people. Several slits about half an inch wide radiated from the center of the dome, and from these slits little flashes of light darted with bewildering rapidity. Several little knobs or buttons protruded from all sides of the square base, and these Oomlag was manipulating with his long, tapering, yellow fingers. As each button was pressed, it gave out a slight, crackling sound.

“This wireless apparatus,” continued Oomlag, pressing a button which caused the little flashes to cease, “is extremely simple. The case is constructed of a metal much lighter than your aluminum, and in it is housed a certain proportion of our indispensable ‘Venusite,’ in containers unaffected by its action. These buttons on the right release certain proportions of ‘Venusite,’ which send out a power wave depending in intensity on the mixture. Other buttons cut off the wave, so that messages can readily be sent in code. The buttons on the left are used to tune in on incoming messages. Important messages are assigned to a certain wavelength, controlled by one button which is always plugged in; others merely vibrate, and as each individual has his own code call, no attention is paid to other messages unless the individual gets his code call. The vibration of the apparatus against our chest is all we need to understand incoming messages. You would be surprised at the lightness of these vibrations. If you had the thing on, you would probably not notice them at all.”

By this time I had finished my meal, and I must confess that I enjoyed it exceedingly. I had not dared to ask Oomlag what the vegetables were, after learning the composition of the soup. They tasted like cauliflower and artichoke.

Oomlag, seeing that I had finished, manipulated a button on his wireless set, and in a moment the girl appeared to remove the dishes.

I regarded her closely. She had been crying bitterly, for her eyes were red and swollen. As she leaned past me to pick up the soup dish, one of her soft dark braids brushed my cheek and fell into my lap. She reached swiftly down to toss the offending braid over her shoulder, and as her little hand hovered for an instant over mine, I felt a small pellet of paper drop into my open palm. Taking advantage of the fact that she was momentarily between me and Oomlag, I slipped the paper into my trousers pocket. Silently she placed the empty dishes on her tray and, without looking at me, turned and walked swiftly out of the room through the rock-panel door.

Oomlag had buttoned up his jacket and was regarding me with an expression, as it seemed, of amused contempt.

“You people think you are wonderfully civilized!” he rasped, rolling his loose, ochre lips back into a revolting grimace. “Yet you are at the mercy of any number of tiny germs. You kill each other, at the slightest provocation. What forces you know about, you do not yet know how to handle adequately. What wonderful, dumb slaves you will make for us!”

HE leaned forward, his cold, glittering, pupil-less eyes close to mine.

“August 21, 1931! Remember that date. Our system of underground tunnels will then be perfected, our power bases established, the charges of ‘Venusite’ in place and ready to be set off. Under each of your largest cities even now work is being carried on. On that date the ‘Venusite’ under these cities will send its destructive wave rolling upward, and the centers of the cities will be ground into dust. In the midst of this confusion our lieutenants will emerge and assume command. Anyone resisting will be instantly destroyed by ‘Venusite’ guns. Nothing in the world can withstand us, and the way will be paved for our complete mastery of your earth. Slaves you will be, among other things preparing for us a certain alloy of metals common here, scarce on Venus. In a little while we shall have sent enough of this back to Venus to bring thousands here. It is only a matter of time before your race will be entirely supplanted by ours. It is the law of Nature.”

He stopped and looked at me with an expression of fiendish, smug self-satisfaction. His horrible words made me quail inwardly, but I determined to show a disinterested calmness, a scientific detachment suitable to one in my profession.

“If you are so smart and powerful,” I said, boldly, “why did you find it necessary to live all these years underground? Why didn’t you simply stay on the surface and sweep all opposition before you without bothering about these tunnels and charges you mention? I’m rather inclined to think it is all a big bluff, and your ‘Venusite’ not what it is cracked up to be. You’ve proved it is powerful, all right, but there wouldn’t be enough of it to do all the things you say. You couldn’t possibly make such a series of tunnels in such a few years.”

I paused for breath. Oomlag was busy manipulating his wireless contraption. He grinned at me sardonically.

“Show me!” I continued, vehemently. “There is one thing we humans pride ourselves on, and that is our sense of logic. It isn’t logical that you could do all these things. You are here, fighting for a toe-hold on our planet, afraid to come out in the open and fight. Why? Because you have just barely managed to get here, and now find yourselves isolated with no means of retreat, and unable to advance. You are . . .”

I stopped, caught by the malevolent expression in Oomlag’s eyes. He had ceased to handle his wireless and his devilish grin had changed to a look of cold hatred. He leaned forward, and for a moment I feared it was his intention to throttle me. I realized that I had gone too far with my bold talk; but just as I was steeling myself for the feel of his terrible fingers around my throat, his ochre lips revealed his pointed teeth and he threw back his head with a guttural laugh.

“Your sense of logic! It is well that the humor of your remarks struck me, for I might otherwise have choked you into insensibility.” His fingers drummed lightly on the table as he continued.

“Let me warn you, my friend, never again to talk that way to me or any other of us. We lose our tempers easily, especially when a slave addresses his master as you have done. But you are new here and I shall overlook it this time.

“A fine sense of logic you must have! Seeing what you have, knowing what you do, to think that we would be at the end of our rope! Do you think for an instant that we would come here, and then be unable to return to Venus or defend ourselves? Why, we have sufficient ‘Venusite’ to do our work here for twenty years more, destroy any feeble resistance you might offer, and send the projectile back to Venus with the alloy needed to construct hundreds more. What a fool you are, you poor earth creature! And among your fellows you are accounted wise!”

I WAS too elated that his change of mood had saved me from the consequences of my foolish remarks to feel any resentment at his description of my mental prowess. I grinned a sickly grin, and said nothing.

Oomlag rose to his feet.

“Come!” he said, shortly. “We have wasted enough time. I had intended to take you elsewhere first, but now I shall give you a glimpse of our space projectile. There is also another thing I wish to demonstrate to you, after which you will be assigned to quarters. Your duties will be explained later.”

Again the doors slid back and we were once more in the large hallway. We proceeded down this perhaps a half mile, passing many of the Venusians hurrying back and forth, emerging from and disappearing behind the hangings on each side. They all regarded me curiously, but without hostility. I was surprised at the lack of conversation. Many had their wireless sets crackling, but none spoke to each other or to Oomlag. I surmised that this hallway was the main residence section, and that the creatures we passed were temporarily off duty.

We stopped before a large curtain covering an enormous section of the left wall. Oomlag gave a short signal with his wireless, the curtain parted, the usual stone doors slid silently open, and we entered a tremendous, brilliantly lighted room. In fact, this room was so much more brightly illuminated than the hallway, that it took me several seconds to adjust my eyes to the glare. As I stood there, blinking, Oomlag spoke a few low words to a huge Venusian who, I noticed, held in each hand a long, cylindrical object like that which the Field General had been toying with.

As I grew accustomed to the unusual brilliance, I took in the details of this astounding cavernous chamber. It must have been at least five hundred feet across, perfectly circular, and evidently hewn from a natural cave, for hundreds of feet above me gleamed the points of scores of large stalactites. Around the sides of the room, placed at intervals of about ten feet, were round objects about the size of basketballs. In the exact center of this mammoth cavern rested a huge, octagonal contraption with a rounded top that I knew must be the interplanetary projectile itself.

Oomlag tapped me on the shoulder.

“Stan-lee,” he said, grinning horribly, “you are now privileged to inspect the masterpiece of our civilization--the space flyer in which we came from Venus to your earth. Much of what I will show you will baffle your intelligence, but it will give you an idea of how powerful we are. This machine serves now as our central power plant. See those tubes projecting from the sides? Half of them are supplying power to those round transformers you see, which in turn transmit the invisible energy to the lights in the various rooms and hallways nearby. Other power stations are scattered through the workings, supplying the laborers with the light which increases their efficiency and the power to drill the tunnels. You would be surprised at the number of your big cities which are already undermined and ready for the day in which we strike. I told you when that would be: August 21, 1931. On that day our kinsmen on Venus will carefully observe your earth, and will witness the well-timed explosions. They will see us emerge; they will see--but enough of that! Come! I will show you the inside of the machine.”

AS we approached this huge contrivance, I marveled at the smoothness and symmetry of its surface. It must have been at least eighty feet in height by thirty in width, a perfect octagon to within about fifteen feet of the top, which was dome-shaped. It was constructed of something that looked like highly polished gun metal. At regular intervals from the sides projected short tubes arranged in clusters of eight, which Oomlag had said were the power tubes; these, however, were the only visible break in the shining surface of the machine. I wondered how we were to enter the thing.

That question was soon answered. The big Venusian who had admitted us to the room, and who apparently was the sole guardian of this valuable chamber with its vital apparatus, stepped ahead of us and pointed one of the round objects he carried at the side of the flyer. Instantly two doors flew out, making an opening about four feet wide and six feet high into the projectile. Stooping, Oomlag entered, and I followed close behind him. Without a sound, the doors shut behind us. At last I was actually inside the wonderful space flyer that had brought this vanguard of horrible, super-intelligent beings to conquer our helpless earth! With hardly controlled excitement and curiosity I gazed around.

We were standing in a brilliantly lighted octagonal chamber some twenty-five feet across, with a metallic ceiling about twelve feet from the floor. In the center of this ceiling was a circular opening about six feet in diameter through which extended a round, perpendicular shaft like the slide pole in a fire station. On each side, opposite the walls of the chamber, were tall metal devices, for all the world like elongated hour glasses, extending from floor to ceiling. On the neck of each was an intricate series of valves and pipes, and from the base of each “hour glass” innumerable small tubes led to the walls. Although I couldn’t hear a sound, I seemed to be conscious of a sort of vibration that made me sense the powerful forces that were at work. At the base of the pole in the center was a round platform which, as I looked, slid noiselessly out of sight up the pole, descending in a few seconds with a couple of Venusians. These, after a curious glance at me, busied themselves inspecting the machinery, reading dials, and moving various handles on the different valves.

Oomlag had been watching me with smug satisfaction, evidently deriving much amusement from my open-mouthed expression of amazement.

“Yes, I thought you would be entertained by this little visit,” he chuckled. “Gaze upon the highest development of our genius. Simply by making a change in the amount of ‘Venusite’ introduced into what you might call the condensing tubes, the power generated is controlled. You already know the power of ‘Venusite’ when you realize that it brought us from our planet to yours; you can imagine, then, what very minute quantities are needed to supply power.